Live data from Hacker News

PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

kslnewsradio.com

141–150 of 1001 posts

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#141
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? To use your analogy, it is parents who are paying for the alcohol and then leaving it in a place where it is easy for their children to access. Responsible parents either teach their children about appropriate alcohol use or make it difficult to access, or both.

> Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? Prepaid phone cards are a thing.

But usually coupled to legally-mandated identity (and age, but it might not be 18) verification so you have an address to send the cops to when someone calls in a bomb threat.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#142
post #2

Presumably they are using some form of IP address geolocation. If that's as inaccurate in the USA as it is in Australia, they're going to have problems - a lot of the time it puts me in the wrong State.

It’s much better in the US than in Australia, where there are only a few IP exit points for the whole country. It largely has to do with ISP. My IP resolves to a few feet in front of my house.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#143
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly it doesn't work? Not even China has been able to make their Great Firewall resilient to stuff like VPNs.

China is a poor example if you're trying to say that people can circumvent political technology decisions. The firewall works for 90%+ of their population and allows them to present versions of events that don't align with the rest of the world. That can happen in the US as well, and we already know there's organizations that are willing to do it.

You don’t need a firewall to present versions of events that don’t align with the rest of the world. We’ve managed to do that with a completely unfiltered internet for years now.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is: > 72 (9) "Reasonable age verification methods" means verifying that the person seeking to > 73 access the material is 18 years old or older by using any of the following methods: > 74 (a) use of a digitized information card as defined in this section; > 75 (b) verification through an independent, third-party age verification service that > 76 compares the personal information entered by the individual who…

Is this much different to a shop needing ID to sell a pornographic magazine, to avoid selling it to a minor?

Don't need an ID to buy a tablet. Or a used phone. Or back in the day, a Nintendo DS or PSP even. I'm sure I still have a PSP Memory Stick around here someone with saucy pixel art stashed away in the bookmarks. This is a genie that hasn't been in a bottle since the internet was born and it won't be put back in one now. At least not like this.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#145

[flagged]

[flagged]

At the risk of starting a flame war, many of the current bills have absurdly broad language which makes it a crime to simply be in public dressed differently than your gender assigned at birth (i.e. somewhere where a minor _might_ be present). It's hard to argue the legislation that's being proposed (and passed) at a state and local level isn't having the effect of making it difficult to simply exist as a trans person.

Yes, much of that legislation is probably unconstitutional, but there is still a very real possibility of local law enforcement arresting someone who's violating these laws by simply walking down the street or visiting relatives.

I don't doubt that some of the broad brush legislation is at odds with many conservative individual's beliefs and intents for it, but the legislation being proposed and passed at a local and state level is quite concerning. It's a bit hard _not_ to see it as an attack.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#146
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should an alcohol vendor be responsible for not selling booze to children?

Are you arguing that booze is protected speech?

Are you arguing allowing children to view sexual acts is legally protected? Should we open up strip clubs and brothels for kids?

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#147
post #105
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age. There's no practical way to check ID on the web. In your "Real World" the vast majority of the time checking ID is just some person that works for an establishment looks at a little plastic card with your photo on it and checks t…

Cell phone operators offering age verification is an actual real thing that exists right now in Japan. No ID handover requires. You need to make a user ID (and have a cell phone). The impossible becomes possible real quickly when businesses decide they need it to move forward.

So your proposal is that every access to porn must be forever associated with your personal phone number?

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#148
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my own thoughts: there could theoretically be an identity system that simply replies "Yes/No" if someone is underage or not. But nothing like this exists to my knowledge.

That service would need to be run by a third party, which would know your id and the fact that you are trying to access pornhub, wouldn't it?

It would be possible to design a protocol that allows you, a website that needs to know your age but not anything else about you, and a third party verification service that knows who you are to verify your age to the website without the verification service knowing who you are verifying your age to, and without a fourth party such as a government with a subpoena that lets them get the records of the web site and the verification service figure out that you have used the latter to prove your age to the former.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is: > 72 (9) "Reasonable age verification methods" means verifying that the person seeking to > 73 access the material is 18 years old or older by using any of the following methods: > 74 (a) use of a digitized information card as defined in this section; > 75 (b) verification through an independent, third-party age verification service that > 76 compares the personal information entered by the individual who…

Is this much different to a shop needing ID to sell a pornographic magazine, to avoid selling it to a minor?

Showing your ID isn't something that can be stored and leaked later. It also doesn't have the same stifling effect on speech that a normalized internet ID would have. They're two fundamentally different things.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#150
post #103
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be: more visitors to from Utah?

You would be surprised how many are owned by the same parent company as Pornhub. Mindgeek own a massive amount of the internet's porn.

Is the (self-imposed) block Mindgeek-wide or just PornHub? Judging by the articles about it, it seems to just be PornHub (for now).
Post reply on HN